Archive for February, 2012

I’m thinking it snowed more heavily at Bremerton National
Airport on Tuesday night than anywhere in Kitsap. I’m saying three
inches.

I was there to listen to a session in which Port of Bremerton
staffers gave some updates to visiting members of the Bremerton
City Council, and vice versa.

Here are some news tidbits I picked up.

THE PRISON: As you know, Bremerton is one of three finalist
sites the state is considering to someday build a men’s prison
solely dedicated as a reception center. Once convicted, prisoners
are taken to a reception center, where they stay several months
before being sent to another prison where they will serve out their
sentences. A portion of the Washington Corrections Center at
Shelton currently serves that role, and the state projects a future
need for more of that type of space.

McCleary and Shelton are the other finalist sites.

The 40-acre site would be in the South Kitsap Industrial Area on
property owned by Overton & Associates. “And they are a willing
seller,” said Roy Runyon, a city councilman. An Overton
representative currently is working with the city.

Port leaders were receptive to the idea of a prison in theory.
For one thing, it would help get some infrastructure into the vast,
undeveloped SKIA they can’t get in now, they said. Maybe the
arrival of the prison could bring funds to help finish a road the
port is trying to build there. And it would add hundreds of jobs
and inject money into the local economy. There is state money for
selecting a site, but not a dime of construction money.

Port leaders were concerned however, about placement of the
prison in SKIA. Like nursing home and hospitals, it shouldn’t be in
a flight path, they said. People are stuck there, they said. In the
event of an air crash, they couldn’t get away.

“Our first and foremost concern always will be the airport,”
said Tim Thomson, port CEO.

SAFEBOATS: Thomson said there hasn’t been much movement on the
effort to build port tenant Safe Boats International a bigger and
more modern home. Business apparently isn’t as robust there as port
officials thought earlier when a new building was on everyone’s
lips.

“It looks like the expansion rate isn’t going to be as robust as
we expected last summer,” Thomson said.

DRAG STRIP: Thomson said no one’s giving up yet on a drag strip
in a relocated Bremerton MotorSports Park, or even retaining the
one that’s on the far side of the runway now, and into the
future.

“I don’t think the drag strip is out of the picture,” Thomson
said.

BEDS: Runyon said the Bremerton Economic Development Study has
been released. That’s the study that prioritizes 30 years of future
improvements mostly along Highway 3. It doesn’t even mention rail
capability along Highway 3, Runyon said. The Navy owns some track
at the port, which conceivable could hook up to the Port of Grays
Harbor and the national rail grid.

Runyon suggested the city or port talking to the people at the
Port of Grays Harbor to encourage it to add crane capability.
Costing about $3.5 billion, we could help, he suggested. If Grays
Harbor had the capability to lift cargo on and off ships, Bremerton
industries could ship their products out of there.

Thomson reminded Runyon that the Port of Tacoma is closer.
Runyon reminded Thomson that ships save a lot of time on the water
by going to Grays Harbor.

BREMERTON MARINA: According to Bremerton Marina manager Steve
Slaton, the new marina continues to be mostly empty. Sixty percent
of the marina slips are untaken. Only 10 percent of the slips in
the Port Orchard Marina are empty.
“We’re being impacted by the economic times,” he said. Slaton said
local boat sales are down 75 percent in the recession, and claimed
that’s the number-one driver of empty marinas.

A Bremerton councilman questioned whether covered moorage could
make a difference.

Port Commissioner Larry Stokes said, “That marina, we’re
subsidizing it by $1,000 a day. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not
a good return.”

BREMERTON — Safe Boats International, local maker of fast
security boats, has begun delivery of 37 vessels to the Navy.

The boats are 33 feet in length and will be used at Navy
installations all over the world, according to the online
publication The Marine Executive. The vessels are capable of going
33 knots.

The model is a new interpretation of the Force Protection-Medium
patrol craft. It has a capability for thermal imaging and sending
encrypted communications. Two outboard engines power it.

“We’ve had a great relationship with our Navy for a long time.
It is a great feeling to provide them with Safe Boats that they can
rely on to protect our fleet and harbors for years to come,” said
Safe Boats Chief Executive Officer Scott Peterson.

Safe Boats is located in the Olympic View Industrial Park off
Highway 3 near Bremerton National Airport.

Family and family of Tony Radulesco, please call me very soon. I
am writing a tribute to the fallen trooper and am asking you to
share your memories. Thank you. Rachel Pritchett, reporter, (360)
475-3783 or rpritchett@kitsapsun.com.

BREMERTON — Driving is becoming more expensive in Kitsap County,
with the price for a gallon of unleaded quickly rising to $3.70
Tuesday.

That’s up 12 cents from a week ago and 20 cents from a month
ago, and now not that far off from an all-time local high of $4.37
on June 19, 2008.

The price of gas in Kitsap County far exceeded the national
average of $3.57 a gallon Tuesday, according to auto club AAA.

Late-morning drivers were lined up waiting to get gas at the
Longhouse Texaco on Highway 305 between Bainbridge Island and
Poulsbo on Tuesday, possibly on reports gas prices were going to
spike higher in coming days.

The price of gas is going up everywhere, thanks in part to
concerns that Iran will cut off more oil to Europe, and regionally,
a fire at a refinery at Cherry Point in Ferndale. But it’s highest
in states along either coast and in Alaska and also in Hawaii,
which had the most expensive gas at $4.25 a gallon.

States with lower cost gas are in the Midwest, generally, with
Wyoming clocking in lowest Tuesday at $3.04 a gallon.

Meanwhile, oil prices have climbed to the highest level since
May.

Benchmark crude rose by $2.65, or 2.6 percent, to end the day at
$106.25 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That’s the
highest price for oil since May 4, according to The Associated
Press.

BREMERTON — Jim Posner has been elected president of the
Bremerton Pilots Association.

The retired information-technology consultant replaces Don
Dicksion as leader of the group of small-plane owners.
Bremerton Pilots Association now stands at 27 members, and Posner
will try to increase that number, despite rough economic times.

“That’s one of my top priorities, to get a lot more members,”
Posner said.

Many members store and fly their recreational aircraft out of
Bremerton National Airport, including Posner, who owns a Beechcraft
Bonanza. Other members are corporate pilots or representatives of
the aviation businesses located at the airport.

The Association also supports young, future pilots through
scholarships, and currently has scholarships for two more students
to help defray costs of pilot training,. Interested young people
can contact Posner at jimposner@comcast.net or (415) 990-0664.

Posner, 67, has been flying all of his adult life, earning a
private pilot’s license in 1966 and becoming instrument rated in
1975.

He and wife Elizabeth have lived in Brownsville for about six
years, coming here from San Francisco.

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND — Imagine. Bainbridge Island. Dry, without the
possibility of a drop of liquor being purchased anywhere.

It sounds like a long shot, but it could have happened, I
suppose.

As you know, the state is getting out of the liquor business,
and the eight state liquor stores or state-contracted liquor stores
in Kitsap County will close come June, when liquor instead will be
sold in private grocery stores, minimarts, Costcos and other
outlets.

The problem with the Bainbridge store, which is across
Hildebrand Lane from Silver Screen Video, is that the state’s lease
arrangement with owners of the premises was scheduled to expire
March 31, 2012, according to a documents request I made to the
Washington State Liquor Control Board.

That meant that if a new lease agreement weren’t negotiated to
fill in between March 31 and June 1, the store conceivable could
close down.

I live on Bainbridge Island, and this alarming prospect was a
topic of discussion among my friends, neighbors and also with at
least one liquor-store employee, fearful of unemployment coming
sooner rather than later.

We were reminded we are truly an island.

The island’s hard-liquor fans (I am not one of them) would then
be forced to cross the Agate Pass Bridge and buy their supplies on
the Port Madison Indian Reservation, or perhaps have to go all the
way to Kingston, Poulsbo or maybe even the other way, to Seattle in
April and May.

I have since learned that major inconvenience is not going to
happen.

The state has negotiated a lease extension with the landlord
that goes through July 31, for around $6,500 a month. The agreement
was expected to be finalized late this week.

Of the remaining seven state and contracted liquor stores in
Kitsap County go well beyond June, which means they’ll stay open
until the switchover of sales to private stores.

So there you have it — a seamless transition, but we were
wondering there for a while on Bainbridge whether we should stock
up on lemonade.

Top real-estate watchers in Kitsap County weren’t at all
surprised when the median closing sale price of a home in Kitsap
County plummeted 26 percent in January.

They knew it was coming in this slow month. It was the cheapest
homes that were continuing to sell at a respectable rate — even now
— much more than the mid- and high-end homes. And many of those
low-end homes were distressed properties — foreclosures and short
sales. Distressed properties were making up 30 percent of all home
sales.

Fast-forward this trend into the future, and you can predict
there will be progress in eating away at the inventory of
distressed properties in Kitsap County. In January that inventory
stood at 610 properties, says ForeclosureRadar.com. And that glut
has to go before any real progress toward a normal market can take
place. It’s that group of homes that are pulling sales prices
down.

Couple that with the latest numbers from ForeclosureRadar.com
that clearly show that the number of properties slipping into
foreclosure is far, far less than it was a year ago. Sometime, at
some point, with far fewer entering into foreclosure, and now more
moving out, the problem will clear itself up. We are seeing the
beginning of the end.

But it is going to take a lot of time to move 610 troubled
properties.

Here’s some facts I found for a couple of our cities in the
just-released ForeclosureRadar data for January.

For all of Kitsap County, there were 40 new foreclosure filings
in January, down a whopping 66 percent from January 2010. There are
deep bargain possibilities out there. Winning bids on foreclosure
properties averaged $197,000, down 8 percent from a year ago.

A third of the distressed properties — 209 of them — are spread
pretty evenly throughout Bremerton. Port Orchard was the second
most common place for foreclosures in January, with 157 of them in
January, again pretty evenly spread through the city. All the other
cities had far fewer troubled properties.

The average winning bid in January in Bremerton was $175,000,
while in Port Orchard, it was $215,000, again both down
substantially from a year ago.

So it is a painful process, one that has to be worked through,
but one that clearly is happening.

OLYMPIA — A valuable relationship that was set to expire between
two local groups to train unemployed people to start their own
businesses has been preserved by the state Senate and is now in the
House.

Proposed by Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, Senate
Bill 6289 passed the upper chamber Saturday. It extends the
synergetic relationship between the Washington Community Alliance
for Self-Help (Washington CASH) and WorkSource of Kitsap County
beyond July, as well as other relationships like it in
Washington.

The relationship under which WorkSource refers some unemployed
workers to Washington CASH for training was established in 2007
with legislation that established “self-employment assistance
programs,” or SEAPS.

Washington CASH is the only SEAP partner in Kitsap County
approved by WorkSource’s parent, the Washington Department of
Employment Security. Washington CASH gets about a third of its
students from WorkSource, so it’s a valuable relationship to
preserve, according to Stuart Walton, the Washington CASH Kitsap
business-development specialist who built the program locally from
the ground up.

“We trust each other,” he said.

But because of the popularity of Washington CASH locally, its
existence isn’t contingent on the WorkSource connection. Washington
CASH in Kitsap routinely has to turn away would-be entrepreneurs
from the four nine-week training sessions it holds each year in its
downtown Bremerton office.

Since Seattle-based Washington CASH started in 1995, about 1,320
businesses have started or expanded in Puget Sound with its
help.

Its work in Kitsap County under Walton’s direction is widely
hailed throughout Washington.

“This program teaches people how to use their professional
experience to go to work for themselves,” Rolfes said. “In a
difficult economic time, it can help people turn the loss of a job
into an opportunity to launch a second career as consultants,
contractors and small-business owners.”

PORT ORCHARD — Kitsap Bank has reported earnings of $7.5 million
and assets of $902 million for 2011, both up from 2010.

“Despite continued weakness in the economy and lack of loan
demand, we have been able to reduce expenses, keep assets strong,
grow our investment portfolio, and increase income,” said Jim
Carmichael, president and chief executive officer.

The bank’s 2011 earnings were up from $2.4 million in 2010.
Assets increased $16 million.

The company has completed a $12.4 million effort to raise
additional capital at the parent level, a move that strengthened
the bank. The key measure of the worthiness of a bank — the
risk-based capital ratio — increased from 13.94 percent a year ago
to its present 16.14 percent.

Bad loans have declined to the point where they now make up 1.2
percent of total assets.

Kitsap Bank is based in Port Orchard and has 21 locations in
Western Washington.